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Rossiter: Novelists ready to be unleashed

Picture a baby spitting up formula all over a spotless bib. Then multiply the puke times 30.

That's what the foolhardy thousands who decide to force their words on 175 blank pages will feel like they're doing when the clock strikes 12:01 a.m. Thursday.

November is the month for any and all willing writers who, for whatever reason, voluntarily take on the challenge of creating a 50,000 word novel in 30 days or less.

Obstacles are many. Timing is bad. Plus, it's physically dangerous. Carpal tunnel and the numbness of being in a 90-degree angle for 20 hours a day could make your toes and fingers shrivel up and fall off.

But NaNoWriMo, as the National Novel Writing Month is officially called, is also a good excuse to do something you've always wanted to try but never dared - write a book. You know, the one collecting cobwebs in that pocket of your mind that also dreams, "if I won the lottery ... when I retire ... one day I will."

Most people left to their own time and devices never get past the title, after all.

A friend of mine for years has pictured his life story told under the heading "Six Dozen Pretzels." He envisions a gritty memoir of an Italian street vendor who trades hot dough for quick cash on New York City street corners.

Another calls her book idea "Three West Liberty." It would include a roundup of grizzled characters who meet daily between 4 and 7 p.m. to sip beer, comment on current events, forget work and avoid their wives. (Massive readership potential there.)

Me, I'd settle for a plot. Because a mousy brunette protagonist who piles her stuff into the car and leaves Miami for adventure as a reporter in Georgia seems a stronger sleeping agent than page turner.

But groping around for a yarn to spin is part of the NaNoWriMo process Chris Baty first tackled with friends in 1999. His idea struck a chord and has rallied the world ever since, with participants multiplying at a rate fast enough to reconstitute the melting polar ice caps with the aforementioned baby puke.

Because spewing as many words possible is contagious. So is the complete disregard for quality and the delete key growing like a weed in your field of whimsy.

That the book you produce will stink is OK, promises Baty, who missed his calling as a salesman.

"Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing," he warns on www.nanowrimo.org. "By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes."

After all, how often in life do you get the chance to mess up 30 days in a row and still end up a novelist?